Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Sam's shirt

I made a shirt for Sam...Hmmm, sounds extremely deja vu-y given that this is what I nearly always make for them, for seemingly every occasion requiring gift-giving. But you see, all my boys are sweet enough to appear genuinely pleased to receive my shirts as gifts, and what is more, actually request them.To have my shirts in demand is such a nice ego-stoking state of affairs, ahem. Plus I do so much enjoy the tailoring process. Yes, really... So how could I not comply with their wishes??Using Burda 7767 (shock!) with modifications, and he came with me to Fabulous Fabrics himself (genuine shock!) and chose the checked fabric and the wooden buttons to go with it. This fabric is a polycotton, non-stretchy but with a permanent crinkle in it.Fair warning; excessive chit-chat aboutpattern matching coming up...Below; the back yoke... when one is working with checked fabric like this, it is imperative to a rabid obsessive like me thatthat slight concave curve of the upper back edge be spaced evenly across as well as for the straight lower yoke edge be exactly even across the seam-line, and for the stripe to not disappear very slowly down into one side of the seam, which especially in a crinkly fabric like this can happen almost without you noticing... and require unpicking and re-doing, ahem. Anyone who has sewed with stripes and checks has visited that one before, I'm sure.Probably why I have this lazyman's preference for solids when tailoring...

Also, just an aside, when I am using less stable fabrics, such as this crinkly fabric, to make tailored shirts; I cut the two yokes one with the grain and the other cross-grain as pictured below. I find this gives a bit of extra stability in an area of high strain.

Purely decorative buttons, one on each sleeve hem.

I went to enormous pains to match up the check pattern on the bias-cut arrowhead pockets as it relates to their corresponding bias-cut arrowhead flaps. They are perfect, if I say so myself. I'm not even going to mention how much minute twiddling, precision-pressing and adjusting this took... oh wait, I just did :) LOTS! Also please note that the two pockets and their flaps are exact mirror images of each other. Over Christmas Day lunch I started what I thought was a very interesting conversation with some female relatives about this sort of dressmaking minutae... until I noticed them glazing over fairly early in the piece and stopped. Incidentally, do other seamsters find that variations in the structure of clothing is a compelling and perfectly good topic for conversation, and that it is inexplicably hard to incite any passion at all in "ordinary" people who take their clothing totally for granted and don't notice nor even care about the All-Important Details?! sigh, I guess this is why we blog...

So, back to the shirt at hand... oh, and by the way, please note the collar has purr-fectly symmetrical pattern placement. Thank you.And tabs, matching mirror images of each other.

Ok, before reading your text, I was very impressed with how well matched and placed the plaid was. After reading your text, I am even more impressed! I've never sewn with plaid fabric. It doesn't sound easy. I am glad your children appreciate your hard work for them.

You mean EVERYONE doesn't obsess over these kinds of details and enjoy discussing them? ;-) My poor husband gets this sort of conversation from me when too many of these thoughts have built up in my head. haha He's a real trooper about it.

Beautiful shirt, I noticed the plaid matching before I even got to your writing. I am incredibly anal when sewing plaid, so I really appreciate your work.

The eyes glazing over, ah yes, I know it well. I may have to start blogging in the 2012 because of it. I have one friend who doesn't even know what bias is! Can you imagine! She also resists all efforts on my part to instruct her. I don't know why we are friends 8-)).

Oh I nodded my head while reading every sentence of this post. The shirt looks great, wonderful symmetry. Non-symmetry makes me crazy which is why I cringe when I see someone with one big tattoo, makes my vision swim. LOVE your description of the conversation and the glazed looks. I have offered to show people the inside of my garments and realized that they were thinking I was nuts. Lastly I am mad for plaid always, so all plaid sewiing discussion are fine with me - so fun to see how you deal with it. Happy New Year, Beth

Yes, the glazed look...aren't we lucky to have found one another through blogging? We all can go on to our heart's content, knowing that our readers will not glaze over. I have stopped sharing every creation that happens in my sewing room, as my husband glazes all too easily.

Now, the shirt-what a masterful use of the print. It is a wonderful piece of clothing!!

Great shirt!! I wish my son would let me make him a shirt - but he is still into just black and white (sometimes grey) t-shirts. Gosh you've done a marvellous job - matching perfectly and I love the detail!!!

That shirt is beautiful (Do you say that with men's shirts too?). Even if most people don't notice the mirrored everything it does give that extra special something. Now if you had brought in how we are drawn to mirror symmetry because of evolution and our genes ... wait would it be just my nerdy family who's interest would be spiked by that?